Saturday, November 10, 2012

But
that sort of thinking puts children in jeopardy, said Dr. Robert Cantu,
one of the world’s leading experts on traumatic brain injuries, because
concussions also occur in soccer, baseball, softball and even
cheerleading. And it doesn’t take a big hit to the head to cause a
concussion, he said.

“No head trauma is a good head trauma,”
Cantu said in a recent interview from Boston. “If I could pick one thing
that I wish everyone understood, it would be that no head trauma is a
good head trauma.”

More than 4 million sports- and recreation-related concussions are
identified each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, but Cantu said many times that number go undiagnosed.

Football
and ice hockey have the highest risk of concussion among young players.
A recent study indicated that there are approximately 67,000 diagnosed
concussions among high school football players each year, but Cantu,
whose new book “Concussions and Our Kids” stresses that common sense
solutions can make sports safer for young athletes, wants parents and
coaches to understand that concussions occur regularly in many sports.

According to Cantu:

• The
person at the top of a cheerleader pyramid is 10 times more likely to
suffer a concussion or a catastrophic injury than a football player. “I
can’t imagine many things as risky as throwing someone 20 feet in the
air with only a few sets of arms between her and a hardwood floor,”
Cantu writes.

The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury
Research at the University of North Carolina noted that there were two
high school cheerleading catastrophic injuries during the 2009-2010
school year and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons
estimated there were 10,000 concussions in 2011 among cheerleaders,
gymnasts and dancers.

• Head-first slides and helmets without straps should be banned in baseball.

• More
high school soccer players had concussions in 2010 than basketball,
baseball, wrestling and softball players combined, according to the
Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) in Columbus, Ohio. Female
high school soccer players suffered 25,953 concussions in 2010 and males
had 20,247. For comparison, male basketball players had 11,013
concussions.

Chin straps for batting helmets?

A concussion is a disruption of the normal chemical
activity in the brain and is caused by the brain being jarred.
Concussions can cause sensitivity to light or sound, headaches, loss of
memory, dizziness, balance problems, confusion, drowsiness, nausea,
difficulty in concentration and other problems. Concussion symptoms
disappear within seven to 10 days in approximately 80 percent of cases,
but symptoms may remain for weeks, months and, occasionally, for years.

Cantu
said 90 percent of the soccer-related concussions that he treats are
related to heading accidents and he believes eliminating heading in
soccer until players are 14 years old would move soccer from among the
most dangerous sports for concussions to among the safest.
Cantu
said he is not so concerned about the ball hitting the players’ heads
(only 7 percent of female soccer injuries come from head-to-ball
contact, according to the CIRP), but he is very concerned with elbows,
shoulders, knees, heads and other body parts smashing into players’
heads as they attempt to head the ball.
.
In baseball and
softball, sliding head-first is inherently dangerous and should be
eliminated on the youth level, said Cantu, who is chief of neurosurgery
and chairman of the Department of Surgery at Emerson Hospital in
Concord, Mass. The chance of the ball and the head arriving at the same
moment or the head crashing into another player are too great to allow
the use of head-first slides, he said.

The danger is heightened by
the use of helmets that can easily fall off during play. Why don’t
baseball batting helmets have a chin strap?

“Probably because
helmets have always been made without a strap,” he said. “If helmets
were made by someone who had operated on a hematoma in a child’s brain,
the helmets would have straps.”
Cantu also said all field hockey and lacrosse players should wear helmets.

“Does anyone really believe the girls are safer because they don’t have a helmet on?” Cantu said.
Despite
arguments by some in the sports that there would be more blows to the
head if field hockey players and female lacrosse players wore helmets,
Cantu believes that if you hand athletes sticks and encourage them to
swing them, there has to be protection for the head. “But helmets
eventually will be mandatory in these two sports,” he said. “There are
too many facial injuries, fractured skulls and concussions that could
have been prevented. The change will be made soon, so why not make it
now?”

Long-term impact

Cantu doesn’t want children to stop playing sports but he wants them to play as safely as possible.
Children are much more susceptible to concussions than adults. Their
heads are proportionately larger and their brains still are developing.
Cantu is emphatic that children younger than 14 should not play
collision sports. He believes ice hockey should ban contact in leagues
for children until age 14 and that children shouldn’t play tackle
football until they are 14.

“By age fourteen, our necks are strong
and our overall strength is sufficient to keep the head steady when
slammed at the line of scrimmage,” he writes. “Brains have matured too.”

Other
experts, including the University of North Carolina’s Kevin Guskiewicz,
believe it may be safer to begin athletes in football at an earlier age
when they are playing against players their own size and age. Proper
techniques can be developed more safely under these circumstances, he
said.

Guskiewicz notes the huge difference in size and strength
among high school players can pose increased risks of head injury if
athletes do not learn proper techniques earlier in their athletic
careers.
In his book, Cantu tells stories of parents who
protested his prescribed period of limited physical activity to give the
brain time to heal, because the recovery period would take the child
out of the lineup.

Cantu stressed that proper care is needed and
that all concussions should be taken seriously. A parent who urges a
young athlete to ignore headaches and other concussion symptoms is
putting their child at risk.

“It is important for children to be
involved in sports,” Cantu said. “I enjoy sports very much. But we need
to keep the proper perspective. The child’s status on the team isn’t as
important as their health. Sports are great. They can teach great
values. But parents have to think about the health of their child.”